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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27236212">The Word Which Separates Us</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/pseuds/MildredMost'>MildredMost</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bedside Vigils, Consumption, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Near Death, Sick Character, Sickfic, Yuletide Treat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:22:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,107</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27236212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/pseuds/MildredMost</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Chapter of this History Reopens -- a Miracle occurs -- Nicholas understands his own heart at last -- Smike makes a new friend with Unexpected Consequences.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nicholas Nickleby/Smike</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Word Which Separates Us</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/gifts">patrokla</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Smike had lived: to begin with.</p><p>There had been a time, of course, when Nicholas could not have said this with such certainty. After all, he had taken Smike to Devonshire that summer to die.</p><p>Nicholas had thought to heal him somehow, perhaps with the fresh Devonshire air, or the good Devonshire butter, or the quiet beauty of the countryside. But Smike failed and failed, his cheeks sunken, and his step more faltering, until he was wasted almost away.</p><p>“I am not afraid to die,” Smike had said, holding his hand and his dear pale face so earnest.</p><p>But Nicholas was afraid of it. So deathly afraid that he thought his heart would stop along with his friend’s.</p><p>By the beginning of autumn, Smike began to sleep longer and longer and speak less and less. And even Nicholas had run out of anything to say. Instead he sat holding Smike’s thin hand and pressing his face to it, willing life into him. Praying, bargaining. The physician, coming to see Smike on his rounds one afternoon, advised that Nicholas say his goodbyes.  </p><p>When the doctor had left, Nicholas wept. He could not say goodbye and he would not. Instead, he slipped into the bed beside Smike, easing him over so that his head was against Nicholas’s chest and he was seated between his legs. Nicholas put his own hand over Smike’s heart, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, and nestling the top of his curly head beneath his chin. <em>There, now</em>. Some part of him felt that if he could surround Smike with his own warmth and life and good health, that surely some of it should pass to him.</p><p>“I’m sorry my dear friend,” Nicholas said. “I’m so sorry for all that has happened to you. Please stay with me, though, so I can try to give you the life you deserve. Oh Smike,” he said in desperation. “If you would only speak to me once more!”</p><p>Smike stirred, nestling his head more comfortably against Nicholas’s chest. He put his hand over the one Nicholas had against his chest. His fever was rising again, and Nicholas despaired.</p><p>“I have no medicine,” he whispered. “But I do love you, my friend. You said earlier you could almost bear to part with me, knowing that we will see each other again in heaven. Well, I cannot bear to part with you, do you hear me? Do not make me.”</p><p> Smike’s hand pressed against his own, light but firm, and Nicholas felt him relax, his laboured breathing quieting. And Nicholas began to say a quiet, fervent prayer for his dear friend’s soul, for this surely was the end.</p><p>That night changed Nicholas forever, he believed. He had never held vigil for a dying man before, his own father having passed so suddenly. It was a terrible, lonely thing. He could not rest, and yet could hardly bear to witness what he knew he must. How had something as important as this fallen to him?</p><p>Hour after sleepless hour ticked by as he listened to Smike struggle to breathe. By the end, so distraught and exhausted as he was, he did not know if he wanted another breath to come. And yet knew he could not bear it if it didn’t.</p><p>As the dawn came he dozed at last, Smike still wrapped in his arms. And when he woke, Smike was still with him.</p><p>And from that morning, Smike began to rally.</p><p>First the fever faded, then the cough. His appetite grew, and over the autumn months his sunken cheeks filled out and his eyes returned to their old brightness. Mr Crummles would have sighed over the roundness of Smike’s cheeks and the way that he had begun to fill out his clothes.</p><p>“I am hungry all the time, though I have not moved a single inch,” Smike remarked, as a delighted Nicholas saw to filling his plate with a second round of toast at tea. Winter had arrived and Smike was next to the fire, wrapped in several blankets and adorned with a new muffler knitted by a kind lady in the village. Nicholas could not bear to allow Smike ever to feel the cold again.</p><p>“We shall soon set that to rights, for the physician says you must have fresh air,” he said. “We shall go walking tomorrow.”</p><p>“I will do whatever you advise to aid my recovery,” Smike said, but his face took on a pensive expression and he laid his plate aside.</p><p>“What troubles you?” Nicholas said.</p><p>“I am only thinking of how I keep you here, month after month,” he said, with a small shake of his head. “Again I am a burden to you. And yet, I almost dread recovery if…if it means you must leave me here.” He could not meet Nicholas’s eye as he said this last.</p><p>“My dear friend, I would not leave you here. What stuff is this?” Nicholas exclaimed. “I could not leave you here alone. Do you think I could be happy, knowing you are not? Have I not told you that my heart is linked to yours?”</p><p>Smike coloured up, even more than the blankets and the muffler and the fire had already caused him to. “You did, and mine is ever linked to yours. But that was when we had nothing but each other to sustain us. Now there are other calls on your heart. You must know that I know it. My heart could never be full, knowing that you long to be elsewhere.”</p><p>Nicholas realised with a shock that Smike spoke of Madeline. Dear heaven, he had not thought of her in weeks.</p><p>He blushed to think of his impassioned speeches to her – the very last thing she had wanted to hear under the circumstances, he was sure. What a child he had been! He saw now how his feelings of being ‘in love’ with Madeline had depended on her mystery and his imagination, and perhaps a deal to many novels. He had fancied himself a romantic hero when he had been nothing but a fool. For without even realising, he had given his heart to another long before.</p><p>There was no romance about Smike, no mystery to solve. He was just himself; loyal, loving, utterly dependable. When he thought back to the first time he laid eyes on that ragged boy, so starved and abused he could barely think for himself, he felt dizzy with anger at the cruelty of it. Smike had snatched his heart from him then and there, though Nicholas had not understood it.</p><p>“There is no other call on my heart,” he said sincerely. “You are mistaken, as was I. You cannot shake me off so easily. So eat, and be happy.”</p><p>Smike’s eyes welled with tears. “I am happy indeed,” he said. “I have never been this happy before.”</p><p>And so they continued to be. It was a hard winter, and one that would have caused Smike most dreadful suffering if they had remained in London. But the sharp frosty mornings and the cold, clear air in Devon seemed only to give Smike more strength and increase his appetite. They had had to order a whole new suit of clothes for him, for he could no longer fit the things he had arrived in.</p><p>“Soon I will be taken for a third Cheeryble brother,” Smike said delightedly, patting his still entirely lean stomach. Nicholas had laughed heartily at this and thrown an arm around his shoulders. Catching sight of the two of them in the tailor’s looking glass he almost did not recognise Smike – he held himself so proudly in his new suit, his eyes shining.  <em>What a fine pair they looked</em>, Nicholas thought.</p><p>But they were not and could not be <em>that</em>, he knew.  Nicholas had pondered on this a long while.</p><p>There had been men amongst Mr Crummles players who had seemed to live that way – as husband and wife. Nicholas, shocked at first, had soon realised their affection for each other was nothing wicked and was as true as any married couple. But that had been another world to the one he and Smike lived in now. And even then he had no idea what Smike might want. Nicholas’s quiet moments were haunted by the horror of the idea that Smike might think less of him if he told him his feelings – or worse, force himself to do something he did not want, to please Nicholas.</p><p>But the longings teased and tormented him as much as his dark thoughts did. He could hardly imagine a life now where Smike was not there at breakfast, smiling at him across the table, or bent with a small frown over a book, or slowly tying on the new boots he was so proud of so that they could go for one of their walks. The thought of not having him by his side was too bleak.</p><p>Perhaps Smike would marry a local girl, Nicholas would tell himself desperately, and perhaps Nicholas could do the same, and perhaps they could live nearby each other, and see each other every day, and that would be enough.</p><p>But when he was tired or low, he knew it would not be.</p><p>Smike was lounging on the hearthrug one evening, playing with the farm cat who had strolled in earlier demanding to share their dinner. And perhaps it was the cut of Smike’s new trousers, or the sweet delight on his face as the cat chased the string he was dancing for it, but Nicholas felt a sudden surge of longing to kiss him which made him furious.</p><p>“Do not sit on the floor there Smike, you will catch a draught,” he said abruptly.  </p><p>“There is not the least bit of a draught, and I am nice and warm by the fire,” Smike said, yawning. The cat pawed at Smike’s lap and Nicholas wrenched his gaze away.</p><p>“As if that is any better, when that chimney has begun to smoke.”</p><p>He knew that he was out of sorts and fussing like a mother hen. But the good natured Smike only smiled at him.</p><p>“If I am to stay away from the fire <em>and</em> any draughts, then where should I sit at all?” he said mildly.</p><p>“Come up here by me,” Nicholas said.</p><p>His heart sped up a little as Smike unfolded those long legs of his, then came over and sat next to him on the couch. The cat hopped up after him.</p><p>Smike leant his head against the back of it and looked up at Nicholas. “There now. You are satisfied I am neither too hot or too cold, or in a draught, or breathing smoke?”</p><p>“For you to mock me, you must feel well indeed,” Nicholas said.</p><p>“I do not mean to mock you,” Smike said hastily. “You are very kind to pay attention to me.”</p><p>“Mock me as much as you wish, dear fellow,” Nicholas said, unable to sustain his dark mood under Smike’s worried gaze. “You cannot offend me. I am being a perfect curmudgeon. I just mean to keep you in perfect health all this winter, and so I shall keep fussing at you.”</p><p>The colour in Smike’s cheeks deepened a little at this.</p><p>“Would you read to me?” he said.</p><p>Nicholas had begun to teach Smike the skill himself, but however patient he was, Smike made little progress. The letters danced before his eyes, he would say. He much preferred to close his eyes and listen to a book than to read it.</p><p>“With pleasure,” Nicholas said, reaching for the candle. Smike settled himself against him, head on his shoulder, and Nicholas could smell the scent of his soap rising from his heated skin. He bit his lip, trying not to picture Smike stripped down and washing himself over the basin.</p><p>“My father used to read to my mother in the evenings, you know,” he said.</p><p>“Then you will make just as fine a husband as your father once was.”  </p><p>“If I am ever a husband at all,” Nicholas said without thinking. He glanced at Smike who was looking at him curiously.</p><p>“There is no girl in the world who would not have you,” he said. Then settling his head back against Nicholas’s shoulder, he said no more.</p><p>They spent many a tranquil evening like this, the farm cat having thoroughly adopted them, and Smike obeying Nicholas’s rules about draughts and smoking chimneys to the letter. And perhaps these pleasant, innocent evenings would have continued thus, had it not been for the handsome woodcutter.</p><p>He had used to come once a week with the wood they had ordered. But Smike had struck up a friendship of sorts with the man, and now he came by sometimes every other day with a bundle of kindling or a nice bit of applewood to sweeten their fire.</p><p>He was tall and fair and brawny, with a wide smile and a loud laugh, and Nicholas hated him. He always seemed to know when Nicholas was likely to be occupied and then turn up, his loud whistle preceding him along the lane to their house. Nicholas would hear the latch of their door go, and Smike call a greeting. And he would sit at his letter writing, or boot blacking or whatever other task he could not just lay aside, and fume.</p><p>When he had come for the sixth time that week – on Christmas Eve of all evenings! – Nicholas could stand it no more.  Smike had slipped out of the door as Nicholas had dozed and had been gone at least a quarter hour. It could be borne no longer.</p><p>Tipping the cat off his lap he pulled on his coat, snatched up a lantern, and marched down the path to the woodshed.</p><p>It had been snowing these past few hours, but Nicholas could follow Smike’s prints in the snow well enough. Holding the lamp aloft he found Smike leaning against the shed door smiling up at the woodcutter, and the woodcutter leaning over <em>him</em> in turn.</p><p>“Smike! You should not linger out here,” Nicholas called. He turned to the woodcutter. “You should know better than to keep him out of doors in this night air. He has to be careful of his health.”</p><p>“He looks hale enough to me,” the woodcutter said with a laugh. Nicholas wanted to heave one of his logs at his head.</p><p>Smike looked from one to the other of them, unsure of what to say. Nicholas lifted his chin and stared the woodcutter down.</p><p>The woodcutter, seeing Nicholas’s expression, sobered and gave him a nod.</p><p>“I’ll be off.  A Merry Christmas to you. And mind my words,” he said to Smike. With that he took his handsome self off to annoy someone else.</p><p>Smike turned to look at Nicholas. He wore the soft red muffler around his neck, and his cheeks were rosy from the cold. His breath clouded before him in the lamplight, and it came easily – not a hitch in his chest or any a hint of a cough. There were snowflakes caught in his hair and without thinking, Nicholas brushed them away.</p><p>“You are so urgent to speak with our woodcutter you are willing to stand here for a half hour, collecting snow?” Nicholas said.</p><p>“Has it been so long?” Smike said. “He only stopped to show me how to stack it so it won’t get damp. See here, we had been doing it all wrong – like city boys would, he said. You must keep the bark at the top so the rain runs off.”</p><p>“I would have helped if you had called me,” Nicholas said.</p><p>“I did not want to trouble you,” Smike said. “Folair looked so comfortable in your lap.” For so they had named the cat, as he had the same theatricality and slyness of that gentleman, and the same dark whiskers to boot.</p><p>“Well, then,” said Nicholas sulkily, for Smike had done nothing wrong, and neither had anyone else. Indeed the only person in the wrong was himself.</p><p>“Have I done wrong?” Smike said. He held his hand against Nicholas’s face. “See here, I am warm and well. You need not be concerned.”</p><p>Nicholas swallowed before wrapping his own fingers around Smike’s warm hand and taking it gently from his face.</p><p>“But to stand in the snow like this – aren’t you chilled through?”</p><p>Smike smiled. “I always hated the snow before. It meant cold and damp for months and months, and chilblains and up all night coughing. I could not imagine ever being warm, and my feet were not dry from December to March. But this…” he looked up at the flakes whirling down upon them.</p><p>“Beautiful,” Nicholas said. And of course, it was not the snow he looked at.</p><p>“It is all beautiful. To think I was brought here by you, my dear friend,” Smike said, a small catch in his voice. “To think my life was saved by it. Some days I cannot comprehend what you have done for me.” And he looked at Nicholas with such affection that Nicholas could not hold his tongue.</p><p>“I, do it for you?” he burst out. “Why, I did it for myself - I could not bear to be parted from you. You said once that I was your home. Well, you are <em>mine</em>.”</p><p>Smike’s eyes widened a little at this.</p><p>“My dear friend,” Nicholas said quietly, taking Smike’s hand in his. “You must know that I am perfectly devoted to you.”</p><p>Smike’s mouth opened but he did not speak, his warm brown eyes looking deep into Nicholas’s as though he could not quite understand what had just been said.  For a moment they were both utterly still; Nicholas felt a terror then that Smike might pull away, that he might turn from him entirely and all would be ruined. But then he felt the urgent press of Smike’s hand in his and a wash of relief went through him.</p><p>“You must believe me,” Nicholas said voice low though there could be no one to overhear them.</p><p>“I do believe you,” Smike said, and there was wonder in his voice. “I have never trusted the word of any other person more. I just...I thought perhaps that for a moment that I was dreaming.”</p><p>“A pleasant dream?” Nicholas said.</p><p>Smike smiled his lovely smile. “The most pleasant dream I have ever had.”</p><p>Nicholas breathed out, his relief giving way to longing.</p><p>He tugged Smike a little closer to him. “I want to hold you,” he said.</p><p>Smike’s eyes closed a moment. When he opened them, the look he gave Nicholas almost set him alight.</p><p>“Yes,” was all Smike said.</p><p>Without a word, and without breaking hands, he led Nicholas back through the snow to the door of the cottage.</p><p>The door had barely closed behind them when Nicholas found Smike’s arms around his neck, and Smike’s soft, warm mouth on his own. He gasped at the touch, at the unexpectedness of Smike taking the lead, but he could barely think of that as he pulled Smike tight against him, feeling his heat, and smelling the woodsmoke in his hair. They broke apart a moment and Smike quickly divested himself of muffler and coat, and then helped Nicholas out of his own, before they managed a few steps across the room to the couch. Finding each other’s mouths again, they kissed on and on. All the kisses they had wanted to give for all this time, being bestowed all at once.</p><p>Nicholas discovered much about Smike that night. First: though he was as innocent as Nicholas had expected, he was not in the least shy about wanting to give pleasure and taking pleasure of his own. Second: that it was delightful to unclothe him and see his body so healthy and strong, and so urgent for Nicholas. And thirdly and fourthly and many others after that, came the discoveries of how Smike liked to be kissed, and the places he liked to be touched, and the sounds he made and the way he looked as Nicholas discovered them.</p><p>If perhaps that old couch was hard used that night, there was no other witness to tell of it. And if after a while when the candles had gone out and the fire had sunk to ashes they had repaired to Smike’s bedchamber to continue their explorations, then who but them knew of it? And if one had cried out and moved the other to tease "who calls so loud?" until they both succumbed to laughter, we will never know for sure. And if the first of these two explorers to awake the next morning went about rousing the other with gentle lips and softer touches, then that is a story for them alone, and a story that did not end that morning, or that afternoon, or indeed the night after that.</p><p>Nicholas wrote to the Cheeryble brothers very shortly afterward, explaining that Smike, while recovered, was too delicate to ever return to London and Nicholas was loathe to leave him.  However, he suggested, there was no reason why he could not be of assistance here in Devon – for did not some of their merchandise arrive there from the continent, and would it not be advisable for Nicholas to ensure its safe passage from the custom house to Threadneedle Street?</p><p>He had his answer by return – this was the most marvelous of ideas, the brothers agreed. That their goods would be received and sent on by such trustworthy hands was a source of great comfort to them both. And naming a salary which was quite out of proportion to the service provided, the contract was made.</p><p>And how the boys flourished under this arrangement! Letters were dispatched to Mrs Nickleby and Kate who were only too understanding of the situation. A lengthy lease for the small farmhouse was quickly procured, and that spring Smike set about transforming the ground around it into a garden which would have rivalled the cottage at Bow. Soon he was in demand from the people who lived around them, for no one could grow roses like that young Smike could, or coax a herb garden out of a stony patch of ground by a kitchen door, or assist a person in growing a marrow that would take the prize at the Church fete.</p><p>Smike grew strong and sunburned in the gentle Devonshire sunshine. And Nicholas – who found that he could not under any circumstances resist the strip of freckled skin at the nape of Smike’s neck and was moved every day to kiss him there – made sure that Smike knew just how delighted Nicholas was with his every endeavour.</p><p>“This,” he would say, pressing Smike hard up against the kitchen table and kissing him deeply, tasting the warm sunlight on his lips, “Is for being in good health these three months in a row. And this…” his hands wandering now, drawing gasps from his partner, “Is for the crop of apples you have grown on that old tree by the barn for I have never seen a crop like it.”</p><p>“There are only a dozen apples on that tree,” Smike said breathlessly. “But -  <em>oh</em> -  I shall t-take the all the credit you wish to give me.”</p><p>So Nicholas gave him all the credit he could take and more, right there against the table.</p><p>And afterwards Nicholas told him all the ways in which he loved him. His dear Smike, Nicholas thought, was in need of as much love as a person could give. And every drop of love that Smike was given, he returned it ten-fold.</p><p>For all Nicholas’s sad broodings about never becoming a husband, it turned out he both was one, and had one. They could not of course ever make vows publicly, but what did that matter when the words they exchanged in private meant much more? They had their own ceremony one day, beneath a favourite tree. Smike cut a lock of Nicolas’s hair, and Nicholas had taken a curl of Smike’s, and pledged their hearts to one another. </p><p>If anyone wondered about the two companions, then nothing was said. Though one day coming home from Customs House, Nicholas found a lover's token of plaited corn laid atop a pile of kindling at the gate. He smiled at this, sending silent thanks to the man who had at last caused him to speak. And looking up to see Smike - his home - waiting at the door, he opened the gate and went to him.</p><p> </p>
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